Personal Christianity a Science The Doctrines of Jacob Boehme by Franz Hartmann, M.D.

 

 Personal Christianity a Science

The Doctrines of JACOB BOEHME

THE GOD-TAUGHT PHILOSOPHER

"Adam would have been lost eternally if the heart of God with the word of promise had not entered his soul, awakening the spiritual  hope which maintained him." (Forty Questions, viii.  5.)

" If the divine principle of love were not still pervading all nature in this terrestrial world, and if we poor created beings had not with us the warrior in the battle,we would all be sure to perish in the horror of hell."*(Aurora, xiv. 104.)

"God, on account of His infinite mercy, desired to aid mankind."God desires that all mankind shall be saved. He does not desire the death of the sinner, but that he become changed, and turning again to God, find life in Him." {Three Principles, Pre/ace, i. 6.)

"(Superficial) reasoning represents God as an unmerciful being, and teaches that He has thrown His wrath upon man, and cursed him to death, because He found disobedience in him.  But you should not believe this. God is love and goodness, and in Him there is no angry thought. Man would be all right if he had not punished himself." {Three Principles, x.  24.)

There was no other way to save mankind, except that the Son or the Light of God should enter into them.

"When the soul went out of the light of God and entered into the spirit of this world, then began the torment of the first principle.   She saw and felt herself no longer in the kingdom of God, until the heart of God came and appeared between her and that kingdom, so that she could enter therein and become regenerated."{Three Principles, ix.  6.)

"There was no other salvation for the divine image in man unless divinity had moved according to the second principle, i e., according to the light of eternal life, and by the power of love rekindled the substantiality (of the soul) that was imprisoned in death." {Menschwerdung, i. ii, 22.)

"The soul has separated her will from the will of the Father and entered into the lust of this life. There could have been no other way of redemption, except that the pure will of the Father should again enter into her substance and bring her again into the state

which she formerly occupied, so that her will would be directed again into the heart and light of God." {Three Principles, xxii. 67.)

"If the soul was to be aided, the heart of God with its light, and not the Father Himself, had to enter her,for in the Father she was anyhow ; but she was turned away from the entrance to the generation of the heart (the beginning ofthe divine self-consciousness) of God,and her desires were directed towards this  external world." {Three Principles, xxii. 68.)

The preparations for that redemption were already made before the creation of this world, as the name of Jesus was embodied in man.

"The name of Jesus embodied itself into the tincture of the soul in Paradise when Adam fell, and even before Adam was created ; as Peter mentions in his first letter (i.  20), where he says that we have been provided for in Christ, even before the foundation of the world was laid."{Menschwerdung, i. 8.  i.)

"The name Jesus was incorporated into the image of eternity as a future Christ, that it may become a redeemer of men, and out of the dying in the wrath regenerate them again into the pure being of divine and paradisiacal power."{Stie/el, ii. 74.)

"The word which God spoke in regard to the power that was to bruise the head of the serpent, was a spark of love from the divine heart of God, and therein has the Father from eternity seen and elected humanity.In this spark of divine love-light the whole world was to live, and Adam was already therein while his creation took place, as is  also expressed by Paul (Eph. i.13), where he says that man was elected in Christ before the foundation of the world was made, "{Three Principles, xvi.  107.)

Pages 204-207 from the book of  FRANZ HARTMANN, M.D.

Personal Christianity a Science

The Doctrines ofJACOB BOEHME

THE GOD-TAUGHT PHILOSOPHER